Jupiter/Luna Conjunction 2012 11 28

This is the "snapshot" I took in my head as I was driving down a New England back road last night. I was on my way to work, and after lamenting that I didn't have my camera I did my best to keep the image fresh in my memory. In my spare moments at work I sketched this scene with a No.2 pencil and printer paper. The original paper "as scanned" is below to show how I envisioned the finished product through Photoshop. I was unable to replicate the thin clouds that originally caught my eye...well, at least unable to create them so that the finished sketch didn't abandon the hand drawn representation. So I ditched the clouds and chose to replicate the higher contrast skies that I saw when I arrived at work. The obvious first impression is that the scale of the moon appears dramatically large. In my defense, I spend most of my photographic field time behind a 500mm camera lens, thus I've developed an eye for overly compressed images. Given the so called "compression" of the conjunction, the barn should have less wide angle effect. In some way, however, I thought the finished result actually worked. I'll spare you any more of my thought processes, as painful as they are. At any rate, I hope others had the opportunity to see this close approach. It was a stunning site.

Jason, you do have an artist's eye and talent. I missed it, clouded out. Thank you for showing it through your eyes. Had you not drawn the moon to scale, your work would have lost something. The harvest moon effect works. There are some images taken, but they are not set against the silhouette of a barn. Beautifully done.

Oh wow my friend, this is something I really like. What a great sketch and nice photographic representation. Just beautiful. Please do more with ground scenery like that, I love this kind of sketches. An artist eye you have.

Jason, more I look at your sketch and more I'm waiting from you. Please after the next new moon in the 7 first day, please try to capture the moon's crescent low on the horizon and best the first 3 days. I'm sure it will be very neat. Do the same shadowed scenery with the moon crescent and some stars.. Really I like your sketch.